Cozen O'Connor to Acquire 15-Person Sher & Blackwell Team Led by Managing Partner

Updated: Cozen O’Connor will be doubling its Washington, D.C., office, bringing in a team of 13 lawyers and two government affairs professionals from Sher & Blackwell in a move that will end the boutique’s practice.

There are six Sher & Blackwell partners in the group, including Stanley Sher; Bob Blackwell has retired, Fink tells the ABA Journal.

“This partnership represents our continued commitment to growth in Washington, D.C., where we will now have more than 30 attorneys,” says Thomas “Tad” Decker, Cozen O’Connor’s president and chief executive officer, in a law firm press release.

“Not only does Sher & Blackwell have decades of experience in D.C., they also have broad national and international experience across a wide variety of industries and practices,” Decker continues. “This combination brings to Cozen O’Connor an extremely talented and distinguished group of professionals committed to their clients, the profession, and the community.”

The move also will be the end of the road for Sher & Blackwell as a separate entity, as almost all of the 19-lawyer attorney roster listed on its website makes the move to Cozen O’Connor, according to Fink.

“The firm as a whole will be combining with Cozen,” he tells the ABA Journal, and, while it will be practicing under the Cozen O’Connor flag, “there will be some discussion as to how we might continue to use the Sher & Blackwell name” within specific areas.

The move resulted from strategic planning by Sher & Blackwell, which retained a consultant last year to look at various long-term business strategy options, Fink says. The partners then concluded that they would be best served by combining with a larger practice, and the consultant pointed them toward Cozen.

“There were more opportunities available for us at a larger firm with a bigger platform,” he explains, and being with a larger firm also benefits Sher & Blackwell clients, many of whom have been with the boutique for decades.

“It’s a changing environment, and we concluded we needed to change to run with it,” Fink says.